BBC News Friday, 18 August 2006, 08:36 GMT 09:36 UK

US judge rules wiretaps illegal

President Bush says the taps are a much-needed device

A secret wiretapping scheme brought in as part of the Bush administration's war on terror is unconstitutional and must stop, a federal judge has ruled.

The programme, approved by President Bush in 2001, allows for the monitoring of millions of US citizens' phone calls abroad without the need for a warrant.

Civil liberties campaigners brought the case against the programme, which was uncovered by the US media.

The White House says the scheme is legal and is seeking an appeal.

In her 43-page ruling on the case, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit said that the surveillance programme violated protections on free speech and privacy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5260892.stm

The Challenge to Illegal NSA Spying

The ACLU defeats the Bush administration in a landmark ruling against warrantless surveillance on Americans.

Friday, 18th August 2006

LEGAL DOCUMENTS The Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no power not created by the Constitution. -- Judge Anna Diggs Taylor U.S. District Court Read the landmark decision >>

LAWSUIT CLIENTS SPEAK OUT The better the ostensible justification for an infringement upon domestic liberty, the more suspicious one ought to be of it. -- Christopher Hitchens, journalist/author MORE > In Chicago, Terkel v . AT&T Challenges Records Sharing > Phone Spying Action Center > Your Comments: Thousands Speak Out On Illegal Spying > Survey: American Attitudes Toward NSA Surveillance > Government Spy Files > National Town Hall Meetings

In the first federal challenge ever argued against the president's NSA spying program, a district court declared the program unconstitutional and called for an immediate halt to this abuse of presidential power.

"It was never the intent of the Framers to give the President such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights," wrote Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in her decision in ACLU v. NSA.

President Bush authorized the illegal program in the days just after September 11, 2001, allowing the NSA to monitor the phone calls and e-mails of millions of innocent Americans.

As Judge Taylor ruled, the program violates the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed by Congress in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

Read more below about ACLU v. NSA and the ongoing challenge to illegal government spying.

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/index.html

The ACLU's excellent source of information about this incredible surveillance which has been exposed and is now being litigated in the US Federal Courts is extensively linked from their website page. The side bar here reflects just some of the links provided by the ACLU's web site including the Federal Judge's decision released yesterday. I urge you to access this ACLU web site page (URL above) and read whatever information interests you. There is much more on their web site.

Despite the fact that this was massive phone tapping and phone network analysis by NSA which is their communications intelligence activity overseas, this activity represent only the tip of the proverbial iceberg which I am dealing with in this web journal. This domestic US phone surveillance is only a very small part of what is actually being done that is far more devastating with respect to the invasion of privacy throughout the world by the US government. The implications of this decision have far greater consequences than most understand and appreciate. This is why the Bush administration if fighting this with all its resources and energy. It is also why it is so important for the ACLU and its clients to ultimately prevail in the US Federal Courts.

At the very end of this decision where the injunctive relief sought is granted, there is a decision cited from Chief Justice Earl Warren made in 1967 which is of considerable interest:

"The Permanent Injunction of the TSP [The Secret Programme 'undisputedly inaugurated by the National Security Agency'] requested by Plaintiffs is granted inasmuch as each of the factors required to be met to sustain such an injunction have undisputedly been met.⁵⁹ The irreparable injury necessary to warrant injunctive relief is clear, as the First and Fourth Amendment rights of Plaintiffs are violated by the TSP. See Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479 (1965). The irreparable injury conversely sustained by Defendants under this injunction may be rectified by compliance with our Constitution and/or statutory law, as amended if necessary. Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution.

"As Justice Warren wrote in U.S. v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258 (1967):

"Implicit in the term ‘national defense’ is the notion of defending those values and ideas which set this Nation apart. . . . It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of . . . those liberties . . . which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile. Id. at 264."

IT IS SO ORDERED.
Date: August 17, 2006
Detroit, Michigan

s/Anna Diggs Taylor
ANNA DIGGS TAYLOR
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

I am reminded of something I noted recently from the preface of Dame Stella Rimington's autobiograpy in a preface written for the paperback edition since the hardback was published three days before 9/11. In it the former Director General of the Security Service (MI5) wrote about the balance between the power necessary protect the nation and the civil liberties for which the democratic stands. She wrote, and I quote it again in light of the above decision since it is so very important:

"We in the UK hold certain freedoms sacred -- freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of religious belief, freedom from intrusion into our private lives. Understandably, unless faced with clear evidence of a present danger, British governments of whatever political colour will lean towards providing maximum civil liberty. To behave differently to to let terrorism win its war against democracy before the first shot is fired. [emphasis added]

"But after an event such as September 11th, we see the balance begin to swing gradually the other way, to give more emphasis to our safety than our civil liberties." (Stella Rimmington, Open Secret, Arrow Books/Random House Group Limited, London, 2002, p xvii)

Judge Taylor makes it clear in her decision that the powers adopted in TSP could not be so taken without oversight as provided by law which was deemed constitutional. President Bush issued a secret order after 9/11 for this domestic US surveillance programme to be undertaken without a warrant from the courts. Hence, there was no oversight as provided by law and President Bush took the law into his own hands.

The same has occurred to me in the UK only it started well before 9/11. In fact, it started three years before 9/11 and two US government agents/contractors, former US Marines Colonel Vine and Lt Harry Bird, arrived here in London to carry out surveillance of the most sophisticated and experimental kind against me seven months before 9/11 in Febrary 2001 shortly after George W Bush was inaugurated as President of the US. This torture abuse of surveillance technology goes on as of this writing.

It is quite obvious to me that those in power at the top in the US and the UK have no respect for the democratic rule of law, its institutions and the legal justice system. There was a policy of torture in place carried out against innocent people like me under the pretext of an assumption of guilt which included human guinea pig R&D and medical experimentation. Although instituted after 9/11, TSP went on in the US unreported for years until is was exposed to the horror of a nation that millions of telephone records were turned over to NSA.

Those in power have not hesitated to abuse that power, and I believe that this abuse is more far reaching than many want to believe especially given the character and nature of the current state-of-the-art surveillance technology. It is the exposure of that abuse with which I am dealing in this web journal in order that the terrorist cannot succeed in destroying democracy without 'firing a shot' or that the absurd irony which was pointed out by Chief Justice Earl Warren does not bring about the demise of "values and ideas" for which the very defense of the US is undertaken.

The problem is one of oversight and proper management which are lacking. Special consideration needs to be given to the nature and character of the current state-of-the-art surveillance technology for it has the potential to be completely and totally subversive which is precisely what has happened in my direct experience 24/7 for many years which started before 9/11.